A new relationship between people, cities, and AI begins with Topo v1.2
We have become used to searching for information about a city.
We search for a place we want to visit, open the results on a map one by one, or browse social media until an event catches our attention. But we cannot search for what we do not yet know. Even when something that fits us perfectly is happening nearby, we may only discover it in a social timeline the day after it ends.
AI does not fundamentally change that relationship if it only searches and summarizes city information.
Topo starts with the person instead.
As you walk through town, you add a memo to a card that catches your attention. You save music you hear. You answer a quick question from Scouter. Each action is small, but Topo treats it as a signal of what matters to you in a city.
When you later decide how you want to spend time in a place, Scouter uses those signals to observe the city. It does not simply choose a recommendation from a list already on screen. It follows places in the city and the information coming from them to look for a new topic that may matter to you.
What it finds returns to the Topo stream as a city card. Your response can then become a clue for the next observation.
Topo v1.2 is not about asking AI to search a city for you. It makes Topo’s original idea—having a dialogue with a city—more concrete.
People do not have to adapt themselves to AI, and AI does not decide a city on a person’s behalf. Starting with a person’s interests, people and Scouter observe the city in their own ways and gradually discover the city that is meaningful to that person.
That is the new relationship between people, cities, and AI that Topo is exploring.
My Memo
Add your perspective to an existing city card and build your own record.
In Topo v1.2, you can add a My Memo directly to a card made by another person or by Scouter.
Save “I want to come back” on an event that interests you. Add what you felt when you visited a place. Keep a note about what to buy on a shopping card. You do not have to start a card from scratch: adding your point of view to information already in the city makes it easy to grow your own record.
You can keep a memo private, or choose to publish it as shared information about the city.
Music Memo
Catch a song that interests you, save it to the place where you heard it, and help reveal the city’s soundtrack.
Cities are full of music: songs playing in shops, sounds drifting from an event venue, and much more. Music lovers often notice a particular track among it all.
Topo v1.2 integrates Shazam so you can save a song as a Music Memo at the place where you heard it.
As many people pick up music through their own sensibilities, a music heatmap can grow on the Topo map and make the city’s soundtrack visible.
This is not a ranking by play count or a playlist chosen by someone else. It is an experiment in observing a city’s character through records of people walking through it and responding, “this is the one,” among the countless songs they hear.
Questions from Scouter
A quick question on a card helps the city learn about you.
Scouter observes a city through information available online, but some things remain unclear: “Would you actually like to visit?”, “Are you interested in this topic?”, or “Is it still like this on site?”
For that reason, some cards show a short observation question from Scouter. You can answer with a tap.
Human observation can improve the reliability of local information. At the same time, an answer becomes a signal of what you respond to in a city. What you answer about a place can become a clue for your next encounter with it.
Ask Scouter to Observe
Ask Scouter to look for what is happening in town around your interests and deliver it as a card.
Signals built from My Memos, Music Memos, and observation questions can become especially useful when you think, “This is how I want to spend time in this city today.”
When you ask Scouter to observe, it begins with both your preference for that day and the signals you have built so far. It looks beyond cards already in Topo, following place information in the city and recent information coming from those places to find a new local topic that may fit your interests.
What it finds arrives as a new city card for you. Responding to that card can lead into the next observation.
People respond to a city. Scouter observes the city using those responses as clues. What it finds returns to people as cards.
My Memo, Music Memo, and observation questions are not separate features. Together, they connect what you feel in town to your next encounter with the city.
Topo v1.2 ties that loop together through observation requests to Scouter.
Topo can begin to understand a person before the person has learned every part of Topo
For nearly twenty years, we have learned how to use smartphone interfaces: open an app, search, choose filters, tap candidates on a map, and look for what we need.
There is no need to remove those ways of working. Maps and cards remain important interfaces in Topo.
But AI opens another possibility.
Instead of asking people to learn every detail of a service and repeatedly operate it or write out what they want, the service can gradually learn about the person through small interactions in the city.
Before a person has learned every way to use Topo, Topo can build an understanding of that person’s city through an ongoing dialogue.
Topo v1.2 is a first step toward that possibility.
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